Posts Tagged ‘neanderthals’

Cloning Neanderthals?


28 Jan

Geneticist George Church is not seeking a surrogate mother for a cloned Neanderthal baby, despite what you may have read. In fact, he wishes that the public were better able to look at what the media presents about science and determining fact or fiction. At the same time, he’s happy if these tabloid reports get people talking about and more engaged in science- something that will benefit their scientific literacy and the national and international conversations about what science can do for us.

But no, he does not plan on cloning a Neanderthal. The ethical questions are just too tricky.

We’re Still Here


02 Jan

To go along with Thursday’s post about the Denisovans (I didn’t give their name), we have proof that ancient modern humans bred with both the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. In fact, I think you could argue that modern humans might not exist if it hadn’t been for the interbreeding.

DNA tests using information from bone marrow registries show that more than half of our immune system related DNA comes from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Without that, some disease may have wiped us off the planet.

While we don’t know what happened to them, I think we can say, they saved us.

Not Human or Neanderthal


30 Dec

How did I miss this story back in March? I was a History major and C was an Anthropology major so we actually talk about things like the extinction of the Neanderthals on a not infrequent basis. So how did I miss the report that there is genetic evidence of yet another pre-human ancestor? One that was neither modern human nor Neanderthal? Better yet, the evidence suggests this person lived in Siberia’sAltai Mountains at the same time as modern humans were moving there. Was there interbreeding? What happened to them? Was their fate tied to that of the Neanderthals?

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